I am really late, but I still think it is worth it. You see, a commenter, apparently from MIT’s lab of nuclear science named Ben Monreal (that is what it says on the web page) reviewed that book I mentioned. That book is “Our Undiscovered Universe,” and it seems to be the work of just a crank physicist trying to make things up. Well, this guy makes this really long review of how he got everything wrong. That is right, Terrence Witt couldn’t get almost anything right. It is too long to go into full details in here, but basically, he makes stuffs up. Here is the link. And his conclusion is written below. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I wanted to take pictures of the 4th of July fireworks and a beautiful full moon. Since I didn’t have it, I decided thatI would show something cool here.
First and foremost, planet pictures! CandadianSkeptic took really cool pictures of the planets. My favorite ones are the following:
You can see the different bands of gases!
In this one, not only can you see Jupiter (lower left) and the very faint Neptune together (middle right), you can also see the two large moons rotating Jupiter!
And then there is science with silly putty. Meaning, they dropped 50lb of silly putty from the top of the building (sorry, couldn’t embed the video for some unknown reason). The way the putty broke apart might surprise you. (hat tip: Mike the Mad Biologist)
I notice how one of the entries is about Mars looking as big as the moon at its closes approach even though it is too darn far away. Yeah, those come up every freaking year even as it never happens. Plus, the post has a link to others saying, no, it won’t happen. I don’t even get the need to spread it every year, since it still hasn’t come true! Heck, it is so widespread even NASA has a debunking page about it. Seriously people, get real, planets are really really really far away. The distance to the moon: ’round 400,000 km, but Mars is several millions of kilometers away. It will look really small, even at its closes approach because really, compared to Earth, it is half its size. Just so that those of you who are purveyors of such myths, here is a real time feed of Mars distance from the Earth (which is very cool! thanks, universe today!).
My favorite statement for all of this is the following from Space Disco:
We Need The Mars Hoax… The Universe Just Ain’t Exciting Enough
I think this statement strikes true at the core of it all. In my mind, these people spreading such rumors have no curiosity at all to investigate and find out how wonderful the universe is without having to invent stuff. Heck, they couldn’t even have done the research to stop themselves to waste time. Oh well…
Oh, and Space Disco mentions about an email on a plead of a Nigerian princess. Has anyone received the scam email? ^_^ ‘Cause I did, which caused me to laugh loudly. Also, I feel like in order to have the astronomy blog badge of honor, I have to recieve the Mars getting as big as the moon hoax mail, so bring it on!
I found two cool stuffs. First, a cool video of a weird creature which I have no idea what it is. PZ suggests tubifex worms, though:
I call it zerg, though, because it looks so much like the Starcraft creature’s egg, like the one in the upper left of the image.
For some weird reason, some of those youtube commenters think it is an alien. I swear, if I read any more youtube comment, my brain cells will cry out in a wave of apoptosis.
Now, the second stuff, it is about a news that came out a month ago, but which is still pretty cool. Basically, some Italian astronomers believe they detected planet by microlensing. The coolest part about this is that the planet they detected was in the Andromeda galaxy! Basically, the way the detection work is in the way they use the gravitational field of some huge objects, say a star, in order to see what is behind. Gravity is like a magnifying lens, it bends the light behind it and focus it. The reason for that is that basically, gravity pulls on the light and bend it. Or as Einstein’s general relativity described it, the mass bent space-time around it, thereby curving the path which the light takes. The following is a simplified version of gravitaional lensing which you and I understand:
As a celebration for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo missions (well almost), I want to post this article of sci am. Well, these days there are a lot of articles on returning to the moon and going to Mars due to the anniversary, but whatever, they are still fascinating articles. It is an article authored by a former Apollo 17 astronaut and only scientist/geologist to go to the moon, Harrison Schmitt, and what was unfortunately the last Apollo mission. Basically, he talks on how astronauts could get to Mars and methods to exploring it, and at the same time, how it is similar/different to going to the moon. While a lot of it is speculative, all achievements begin with great ideas, right? ^_^
Although the mag had an insert at the side which caught my attention. It went like the following:
The Lost Decade
Author Harrison Schmitt has long argued that the cancellation of the Apollo program in 1972 was a costly mistake, and NASA administrator Michael Griffin made the same point in a Mar. 2007 paper. If NASA had stuck with Apollo technology rather than opting to develop a whole new system -The Space Shuttle- even the tight budgets of the time would have been enough to fly four times a year to Earth orbit, expand the Skylab space station and go to the moon twice a year. With incremental improvement, the system could have gone to Mars. “If we had done all this,” Griffin wrote, ” we could be on Mars today, not writing about it as a subject for the next 50 years.
Which in a way makes me sad. I wonder how different things would have been had the program continued. I wonder… Would have arrived Mars by now, or would things have remained the same? And were the space shuttles really necessary in order to bring all of those equipments into space, or could they have done something similar with lower costs? Besides, wasn’t the fact that the shuttles were reusable a good thing? So much questions, so little answers… If I had a crystal ball which could have looked into an alternate future, that would have been cool. ^_^
I just found a very funny video making fun of homeopathy and “alternative medicine” in general. (hat tip badastronomy) It is from a British program “That Mitchell and Webb Look.” The sketch is called Homeopathic A&E:
It basically shows how nonsensicall homeopathy is, which is basically water that has been superdiluted. According to homeopathy, diluting water with the same stuff that harmed the person can cure the person. I know, it doesn’t make sense no matter how you put it or twist it around. They also claim that water has memories so it remembers what it diluted, which if it were true, we would all get sick and died from all of the animal excrements dumped into the water. Unfortunately, some people are spreading such nonsense as fact. It is part of the larger problem called alternative medicine, which if it were real, it would just be medicine.
I have always wondered how people can be succeptible to something like that. I mean really, even if some of the alternative stuffs kind of make sense, a lot of them makes as much sense as claiming that the moon is a giant ball of cheese. Alth0ugh I see a pattern in that all of the alternative stuffs basically provide hope, and it is much simpler than reality itself. Think about it. In the dream world in which homeopathy works, all you have to do is drink water, instead of going through remedies, doctors, and annoying or invasive procedures. Personally, I would love it if any diseases I get could be gone just by drinking water. Unfortunately, the world is just the way the world is, and no matter how much one wishes it to be different, it will still remain the same: Medicine is rrreeaaallyyy complicated.
Global warming is real, all right? Let’s start with that. We know that because there are evidence (real climate is a great site to inform yourself on this subject). Other people, though, like to twist the evidenceds in their own favor because it is too unpleasant for their own palate. Plus, as always, there are always vested interests, like say… from oil and coal companies, politicians, etc. This blog post shows how a certain politician and denialist from Australia is willing to distort reality in order to maintain their beliefs, even if it is contrary to what is already known. They do it by posing ”questions” such as:
“1. Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5 per cent since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period? If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?”
If he would have known anything about it, he would have realized that global warming is a long term thing, and that 2007 is the hottest year on record. Plus, as the blog suggests, that is just cherry picking, data mining, or whatever word which describes the horrible use of data by only choosing parts of it. Of course, you can’t just wish something away just because you don’t like it. Plus, climatologists have data. Why not instead try to solve it before it is too late? After all, it benefits everyone in the long run. And don’t give me the whole it is going to ruin the economy crap.
This is the nth edition of *drum rolls* Pop Quizz! A quizz in which the answers are not obvious and if it is obvious, and you get it wrong, you are rebuked at!!!
Occasionally, I will occasionally ask a question, and the reader will answer them! Sometimes, a wrong answer won’t invite rage, some really obvious one will, and you will be called an idiot if you can’t answer the obvious one. ^_^
Today’s problem comes from a really popular anime called Detective Conan (Case Closed in America). These days, I have been watching too much of it. I just watched over 200 episodes, in fact, which explains my absence. ^_^ Basically, it is about a teenage detective who shrinks into a kid after he was given a poison when he was discovered meddling in the affairs of a criminal syndicate. Since no one takes him seriously as a kid, he has to use an incompetent detective to solve various crimes via a sleeping dart and voice changer. Yeah, I know, it is pure fantasy. Read the rest of this entry »
I swear, why don’t I get a hold of these things sooner?
This time, I almost missed a very cool simulation of a sunspot, which is pretty and an amazing accomplishment. According to the badastronomer, it is an amazing accomplishment because magnetic fields are really complex, and so modeling is difficult. Heck, I find electiricity and magnetism of undergrad level complex enough. Some of you ask, what does magnetism have to do with sunspot? Well, tangled magnetic fields from the sun causes sunspot. And it is linked to various violent activities on the sun, like flares and huge outbursts of particles called coronal mass ejection. Anyways, here are the very cool pics:
This time is number 108. How many have I skipped? That just shows how unreliable I am. ^_^ I hope you enjoy the various articles, hosted by a really good blog.
Anyways, this one is solstice edition. For those of you who don’t know, it is the time when the sun is at its highest or lowest point in the sky. In this case, it is the summer solstice, meaning the highest (in the North hemisphere). It happens because Earth is tilted and it means that at some point, one hemisphere will be leaned away from the sun, while another hemisphere will lean towards it. Meaning, it is the middle of summer, NOT the first day of summer as the rest of US believe it to be. Anyways, it happened at 21 of June, and while it is a bit late… Happy solstice! ^_^
Which was 2 weeks ago. Yeah yeah, I have been getting quiet lazy. Anyways, it was a dinner meeting, which meant eating at a fancy restaurant at Delaware Park. How fancy, you ask? Judge for yourself:
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Posted by ibyea 
Posted by ibyea 
